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Toward The Anniversary Of The Tiananmen Square Massacre – Unlike Mao And Deng, President Xi Will Not Allow Another Beijing Spring March 16, 2021 | By Prof. Vera Schwarcz Introduction Will there be a mass uprising for democracy again in Tiananmen Square this year? Probably not. This is because Chinese President Xi Jinping has learned key lessons from his predecessors, Mao Zedong (1893-1976) and Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997). Both Mao and Deng had dared to open periods of free thought during their time in power. Both were surprised by the depths of discontent with the Chinese Communist Party (CC...

mao, high level tone) is a near homonym for the name of the Great Leader ( mao, rising tone), and a tip to the police from an eavesdropper who misheard one for the other and took you to be disrespectful could ruin your life. 1 Such things no longer happen. The importance of the Chinese government in the daily lives of ordinary Chinese people has receded markedly over the last quarter-century. The space in which unofficial life takes place has expanded, and informal speech is much freer than before. Although there are still no barbed political cartoons in newspapers, sarcasm no less biting is ...

China-watchers, friends of Tibet, and admirers of Pope Francis were amazed and disappointed last week when the Pope announced he would not be meeting the Dalai Lama during the Tibetan leader’s visit to Rome. The Dalai Lama was there with other winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, who—ironically—had gathered in Rome after a planned meeting in South Africa did not take place because Pretoria refused to grant the Dalai Lama a visa. In the end, the pope declined to meet with any of the Laureates. In view of Francis’ extraordinary reputation for open-mindedness, how could this be?

Last week, the American Association of University Professors joined a growing chorus of voices calling on North American universities to rethink their relationship with Confucius Institutes, the state-sponsored Chinese-language programs whose policies critics say are anathema to academic freedom. We asked contributors to discuss the debate. Specifically: the costs and benefits of having a Confucius Institute on a university campus; the economic forces at play; and the role of China in university life more broadly.  Update: Several readers have noted with dismay that this Conversation does ...

Thus, the population was shaken up, forced into silence, and left without any possible leaders of resistance. So it was that ‘wisdom’ was instilled, that former ties and friendships were cut off. ~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, I Can moral life survive dictatorship? When a government intimidates its subjects; when it sows mistrust among them; when it penalizes virtue and incentivizes servility, how might men and women keep faith with themselves and their fellows? Citizens of democratic states tend to ponder such questions, if at all, with a detached, even theoretical, interest. Dictatorships ha...